In Almasi City, instead of saying that an argumentative pair fight like cats and dogs (who often can get along quite well), the idiom is 'fighting like sharks and goats.'

Because in Almasi City the dangerous shark 5-Kay Newt was always up to some scheme or caper or plan or plot and the superhero Ballistic Gal was always there to stop her!

"Dammit!" 5-Kay Newt cried, pummeling a very annoying goat in her stupid, invulnerable head. Wind whipped around them, carrying with it loose items, for fighting inside a stricken airplane is cinematically exciting but not smart. "I was almost away scot free! Why'd you have to come barging in??"

"Because justice never rests and neither do I and also I wasn't going to let you get away with the Tourmaline Idol! The damage it could do in the wrong hands... it's unthinkable!" replied Ballistic Gal, between head punches.

"You think I want this ugly thing?" scoffed 5-Kay Newt. "I was collecting it for a collector!"

"The Catastrophic Collector, who collects doomsday weapons and dangerous artifacts!" Ballistic Gal shot back. She gathered her energy within herself, like pulling back a bow string, and shot herself horns first into the shark's stomach.

"You little..." Kay grunted. "Of course for the Catastrophic Collector! He pays best!"

"Well, he's not going to get this idol! So tell your compatriot to land the plane!"

Kay paused midway through power bombing Ballistic Gal.

"Compatriot? What the hell are you on about?"

"The compatriot who is flying the plane," Ballistic Gal insisted, upside down.

"Oh, I didn't hire a pilot. I'm not splitting the take with some dork."

"Wait... then... if we're both back here... who is flying the plane?"

"I turned on the autopilot," said Kay. "... I think I did. Almost positive."

The plane dropped out of the sky.

--

"Well!" 5-Kay Newt declared, walking out of the flaming wreckage. "That was a savage landing."

The shark patted out some small fires that were burning on the tatters of her suit jacket. A glimmer caught her eye and she bent to examine a jagged piece of the Tourmaline Idol. The very valuable artifact had not survived the crash.

Ballistic Gal groaned and pulled herself out from under a part of the fuselage.

"Great. My payday breaks but you walk out unscathed, Ballistic Dork."

"What part of nigh invulnerability don't you get?" responded the goat, irritably. She could survive a plane crash. But it wasn't fun. She'd thrown up. Twice.

The heroic goat surveyed herself. While she was nigh invulnerable, her costume wasn't. And the bottom half had seen better days. Her cape was tattered but intact so Ballistic Gal tied it around her waist like a loincloth.

"The nigh part?" Kay answered bluntly. "How nigh are we talking? What are the limits on that?"

"I'm not telling you!" Ballistic Gal exclaimed. "You'll just use that information to kill me!"

5-Kay Newt shrugged. It was a fair cop.

The two nemeses surveyed the landing site. They had crashed in some unknown jungle. Since the two had been fighting during the careening and the crashing, they couldn't even say what country they were in. 5-Kay Newt threw Ballistic Gal into the air (for unrelated reasons) and the goat saw nothing but jungle around as far as her eyes could see.

"We're going to have to work together to survive," Ballistic Gal realized. "I may be nigh invulnerable and you may be tough enough to survive a plane crash but both of us need to eat. Both of us need water."

"So you're vulnerable to starvation..." mused 5-Kay Newt.

Ballistic Gal glared.

"Point taken!" the shark said jovially. "Enemies teaming up in a dire situation. Sure to be enemies again later but for now, we work together! Just like in the radio serials."

"Radio serials? How old are you?" asked Ballistic Gal.

"I just like radio," said 5-Kay Newt. "We didn't get it underwater. And did you know they used to do all the sound effects live? Right there in the booth? That's good shit."

"Hm. Well, anyway, let's survive this situation together."

Ballistic Gal held out her hand and 5-Kay Newt shook it.

--

Some days later...

--

"How's that fire coming along?" Kay asked.

The goat glared at the shark. She had discarded her tattered jacket and was basking topless on a warm rock. "You could help!"

"You've got this!" Kay encouraged.

Ballistic Gal... Sammy in her off hours and she didn't feel very on right now... did have it. She'd gotten the fire lit with just a stick and another stick. But there were other things the shark could do. Fetching water for the pair! Foraging for food! Constructing a shelter!

And

she

was

doing

NONE OF THE THINGS.

"There are a lot of other things you could be doing to help!" It was an edited down version of what she really wanted to say to the damn shark.

"Yeah, that's true," agreed Kay. "But I don't want to. And if I've counted the days we've been stranded in this humid hell correctly, it's shark week now. And during shark week, I only do what I wanna do."

"Do you want to starve?? In the middle of some forsaken jungle in the middle of who knows where, where no civilized person has ever set foot???? Is THAT what you want to do for shark week?" screamed Sammy.

"No civilized people?" repeated Kay, holding a hand to her big chest in mock offense. "That's a hell of a way to talk about our new friends Shouty and Yelly."

Just outside the little camp the goat had established, two odd lizard people in grass skirts stamped around, screeched, and threw coconuts at the pair. Amazingly, they were even shorter than Sammy.

"<Get out of our territory!>" yelled one of the dromaeosaurids. His coconut fell short.

"<Yeah! Go milk yourselves, you weird boobmonsters!>" shouted his friend. His coconut was aimed true and bonked off Sammy's head. Not hurting her but worsening her mood.

"<The only good milk is coconut milk!>"

"I'll miss them when we leave," said Kay, a wistful note in her voice.

---

Consider this set back before Sammy fell in a time warp, during the period where 5-Kay Newt and Ballistic Gal were a superhero-supervillain rivalry. They sure got into some situations.

It's hard to think of superhero situations that can be conveyed in a simple picture, at least compared to general hijinxes. It's easy to think of Grace doing something silly or cute and getting a picture for that. Not so easy to think of specific situations for Sammy.

But I do love the Savage Land concept from Marvel. Just a random jungle in Antarctica that happens to have dinosaurs and also when you go there, sometimes you get fun costume damage and wear an artfully distressed version of your clothes.

And that's why there's yelly dinosaurs. You need dinoaurs in a savage land. These ones just so happen to be mammalphobic.

The idea of Sammy and Kay being stranded and forced to work together to survive is just prime story fuel. Although, Kay isn't really that helpful, in general.

I scheduled this picture to post this week without realizing it was shark week. But once I realized, I had to incorporate that into Kay's unhelpfulness as she firmly believes shark week means sharks get to do whatever they want.

---

5-Kay Newt and Sammy Stella, the Bouyant Ballistic Gal, owned by me
Art by  kaemantis